ARMS EMBARGO ENDS FOR SYRIAN REBELS

McCain visits Syria; meets with opposition

PARIS 
The Obama administration’s go-slow policy on Syria came under renewed pressure Monday as European leaders opted to remove a legal hurdle that had blocked arms flows to rebel groups, while Sen. John McCain, a top Republican critic, swooped into Syria to dramatize what he says is the opposition’s urgent need for direct military aid.

The new support for Syria’s embattled opposition came amid high-level diplomatic efforts to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis, as Secretary of State John Kerry huddled in the French capital with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to explore prospects for a peace conference that would bring together rebels and Syrian government officials.

Late in the day, the European Union agreed to allow the lapse of a ban on arms deliveries to Syria’s rebels. Foreign ministers from the 27-nation union, meeting in the Belgian capital, failed to muster the votes for renewing the arms embargo, which will expire Friday.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague declared in a tweet the “arms embargo on Syrian opposition ended,” though there had been no immediate decision to send arms. “Other sanctions remain” in place, he said, including sweeping restrictions on trade with the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Hague, in separate comments, said that the EU decision “sends a very strong message from Europe to the Assad regime,” The Associated Press reported.

The EU decision not to extend the embargo followed a contentious all-day meeting on whether to allow more military backing for the rebels. France and Britain urged an end to the embargo, seeking to increase pressure on Assad, while other governments, Austria in particular, countered that delivering weapons to the rebels would only increase the bloodshed and that Europe should stick to nonlethal aid such as flak vests, night-vision goggles and medicines.

The lack of agreement had raised the possibility of each EU country deciding on its own whether to respond to rebel appeals for more-advanced weapons, particularly antitank and anti-aircraft missiles.

As the deliberations were under way in Brussels, McCain, R-Ariz., slipped into Syria on Monday in a surprise visit intended to reinforce his recent calls for arming the rebels.

The former GOP presidential nominee, in the region for an economics forum, crossed the Turkish-Syrian frontier with a rebel commander, Gen. Salim Idriss, and met with opposition leaders for several hours, spokesmen for McCain and a key rebel alliance confirmed. McCain became the first U.S. senator to meet with Assad’s armed opponents inside Syria since the uprising began more than two years ago.

A spokesman for the Free Syrian Army said McCain and rebel leaders “discussed solutions to help remove” Assad, whose regime has gained momentum in recent days as military and diplomatic efforts to oust him have appeared to falter.

“He was very open and promised to push for us with the U.S. administration,” Louay al-Mokdad, the rebel group’s political and media coordinator, said in a phone interview from inside Syria. “We asked about targeted strikes, and we briefed him about Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons.”